


On The Threshold

by theadventuresof



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Oneshot, open ended but could be canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 00:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13135236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theadventuresof/pseuds/theadventuresof
Summary: Madara faces the present.





	On The Threshold

Madara knows many things. He can identify hawks by their silhouettes and by their calls. He knows the names of all the birds and the trees and the tiny ground-cover plants. He knows how to instantly snap someone’s neck between his hands, how to engulf someone in flames and melt their skin and char their lungs until they suffocate on smoke. He knows how to handle any weapon he’s given; he knows how to treat burn wounds, and hypothermia, and how to tell when it’s going to snow. And Madara knows the future, or at least he thought he did. No sharingan can help him here.

If war breaks out—

 _(When,_ says the voice that he wishes he could ignore. _When war breaks out—)_

Madara’s fingers are frozen on the door handle and the chakra on the other side takes his breath away. It feels like summer; feels like home.

How fragile it all is, Madara thinks; how precarious. He never wants to take any of it for granted. And yet it’s so easy, so tempting, to slip into this routine of _belonging_ , of existing as a part of a whole. The village wakes up with the sun and all its inhabitants go about their daily tasks, tending to crops and pulling weeds and serving food and sweeping the streets and strengthening the beams of all the houses. Madara is a part of that, too, isn’t he—even if he doesn’t always feel that way. He could belong here. He _wants_ to belong here. Somewhere at its center this village has a pulsing heart, a living flame that keeps it alive. Madara burns with it; he breathes it in with every inhale and it grounds him. This is _it;_ this is right; this is real.

And beyond the village walls, the forest is still teeming with life, even now in the dead of winter. Bare trees strain for pale sunlight and foxes and shrews creep along the path at the base of the cliff from which Hashirama’s stone face protrudes, frozen in space and time; too stern, ever-watchful. Tonight the moon is a tiny sliver, and Hashirama’s stone face is lit up from below with the lights from the academy and the offices. Another year has gone by, Madara thinks, rather bleakly, and he tears his eyes away from the window and returns to staring at the door. He’s lost track of the years by now. Sometimes he feels like it’s been at least a hundred.

He remembers Hashirama’s smiling face again, knows he’s waiting just on the other side of the door. This domestic life, the village—this is how it feels to have a family, Madara thinks. He hasn’t felt that for a long time. So many lonely people, scattered like ships in the night. Madara has felt their pain and their agony; he can’t help it. Madara _knows_ he loves too much and he can’t stop, he can’t slow down, he knows he’ll hate himself for it, he can’t breathe sometimes—

To get out of trouble, Izuna used to say, you first have to get into trouble.

(But that was just advice for the dance floor, he remembers; he thinks of a hundred nights and a hundred blazing bonfires, of bumping shoulders with tipsy couples, of trailing sashes and fiery dragons curling higher and higher into the inky winter sky.)

Madara is terrified. He is afraid to admit he wants to belong here, in this village that he named, afraid that the moment he accepts it, all of it will disappear. This existing on the periphery, this constant ache of half-belonging—it’s killing him. But belonging completely, he thinks, will certainly kill him faster.

Madara takes a breath, and lets it out, and opens the door to let Hashirama in.

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, dear, beloved madara, please accept this tiny oneshot. there are so many things i want to say because madara truly is one of my favorite characters of all time but i'm afraid i'll just ramble on forever about him, but here is this anyway. happy holidays everybody <3


End file.
